Research

Aging Research and Biodemography

Honey bees are unique models to understand the biology of aging because they show extreme plasticity in aging and live in complex, yet experimentally accessible societies. They are ideally suited to experimentally address the social dimension of aging and study cognitive and physiological aspects of aging. We use them as models to investigate general principles of aging, such as the relationship between functional and demographic senescence, the influence of social roles and social environment on individual life expectancy, and the plasticity of life history trajectories. The remarkable positive relation between reproduction and longevity in social insects is particularly interesting in this context, and a core question for us it how much of the longevity advantage of the reproductive queen over her non-reproductive workers is due to intrinsic properties versus social facilitation of long life.